Saturday, 26 September 2015

Invasion September 2015 - Tournament Report

Saturday began with the six members of the Obital Bombardment crew meeting up in a cafe in Chessington, to enjoy a fry-up, and to discuss our hopes on the upcoming weekend. What was generally agreed upon, we were all stupidy excited! I recommend you go and visit the Obital Bombardment blog which will, in the fullness of time, have a more detailed account of the tourney, and those of us who occupied the higher tables. (Footnote - I may of got the mission order mixed up in the descriptions below).

Above: My tournament Scourge army on its scenic base.

Should you be interested, the method used to divide the six of us into two teams of three, is contained with the most recent Orbital Bombardment podcast. I was paired up with Ed and Pete. Mike, Dan and Joe formed the other.

Above: The inside of the Croydon Conference Centre.

Game One - Michael (from Team Germany) - UCM - Targets of Opportunity - A loss, 8 points to 12.

Above: How Scourge destroy a building.

We had a nice chat about the tournament scene in Germany. Michael was very good at rolling sixes for objective finding. I suffered a narrow loss on tournament points.

Above: The Orbital Bombardment Crew refuelling.

Game Two - Phil - Shaltari - Ground Control - A win, 13 points to 7.

Phil was a very generous player, for example, when I decided to put a unit of immortals in a building, he explained that the Ghariel parked outside would probably make short work of them, and asked if I wished to reconsider. Which I did. Nice chap.

Game Three - Greg - PHR - Secure the Flanks - A loss, 5 points to 15

According to my score sheet the result of the game was a close thing 11 points to 9, but taking Greg's kill points into account it became a 15 to 5 victory to him. I got overly adventurous with my guys and Greg punished me for it (the Athena killed my Oppressor in two activations in turns three and four, and in all I lost almost 1200 points over the whole game, ouch!).

Game Four - George (The eventual winner of best painted, and totally deserved) - Resistance - Bunker Assault - A win, 11 points to 9.

Lesson learnt - the jink and weave card is immensely powerful (+2 to any shots against a battle group, and lasts from one activation until the next, potentially the majority of two turns if used correctly). The use of this, as well as the aggression card, lead to the loss of George's Alexander by my Reavers.

Game Five - Steven - PHR - Military Complex - A win, 12 points to 8.

When this game started, I thought is was going to be a rerun of game one. Steven's first two search rolls were sixes. However, the Jink and Weave card came to my rescue again, and the Reavers were able to take down two Helios and two Phobos. That left only two Phobos, so my army took to the skies. The toughness eight buildings make it very difficult for them to be demolished and for my heavy infantry to be killed outright. As my Eviscerators flew off the board with the winning objective, Steven played the counter measures hack command card. A Phobos got two hits and then rolled a double one for damage! I was a lucky git, but Steven was very good about it despite my failure to not be a grinning idiot for some time afterwards.

In total, I had achieved three wins and two losses; my best ever score for a tournament. The final rankings seemed to show me as finishing 33rd out of a field of 53 or so. Very happy with that, especially as I had only played two previous practice games with the army.

Lessons learnt:
- a Scourge player has to play the long game and hope the timing works out. The speed of the models does help this. Do not worry if your early activations are over quickly.
- you cannot go toe-to-toe with the opposition.
- Some of the Scourge Command Cards (Jink and Weave and Aggression) are game changers.
- Having a level five commander is the way to go (especially as the majority of those opponents I played went with a level three).

Above: Hawk Dave showing off a 1 millimetre to 1 foot scale model of a UCM Drop Fleet spacecraft. He was also kind enough to chat with me about his creation of the game and the early days of getting it up and running.

Above: The more successful half of the OB Crew collecting their best team award.

Thanks to Hawk for running a brilliant tournament (Louie, Dave, James and Simon) and all the participants, especially those from further afield, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden, for making it a great event.